Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

[Aloysium]

It means one needs a better browser. Where science takes place on the Internet, this is an important application to have running well.

 

[Aloysium]

if human’s body is, indeed, categorized as “animal,” does this somehow defeat Christianity or challenge your faith in God?

It defeats any residue left of faith in evolution. We need to respect authority, but human understandings cannot reach what requires revelation. A story that lacks coherence within itself except in the most superficial and simplistic manner, the proposal of a set of mechanisms that cannot possibly explain what they say they do, and a vision that is incongruent with reality, is not going to convince me. To be perfectly honest, personally speaking, when I hear that my arguments make no sense, it only defeats a hope that we can communicate in this post Tower-of-Babel world.

 

[edwest211]

I’ll just mention that there are people so committed to this that even if it continues for years, it will just continue for years. Living in a post-truth world means that we must continue to defend the whole truth.

 

[buss0042]

Better yet is to contemplate reality without engaging in logical fallacies.

Having a rational soul and being an animal are not mutually exclusive. Aristotle and Aquinas refer to humans as “rational animals.” You’ve admitted as much, that everything about the human body points to it being an animal, but then give us an unsupported claim that the spiritual nature of our souls somehow fundamentally changes the physical, biological nature of our bodies. Both the physical truths of our bodies and the spiritual truths of our souls and bodies can and are true - they are not competing with one another.

Perhaps another way to reconcile this - physically, we are animals, which is the pinnacle of biological life. Spiritually, we are rational beings, which is the pinnacle of the realm of souls. We are the pinnacle of both the created physical and the created spiritual.

Just like we are rational souls, we embody the characteristics of the rational soul, but also possess the characteristics of the vegetative and sensible souls. We are not merely the characteristics of the vegetative soul, because our rational soul builds on the foundations of the vegetative soul.
Just the same way, our rational soul builds on our physical bodies, but it does not do away with the foundations of our physical bodies, which are animal in nature.

 

[Bradskii]

I’ll just mention that there are people so committed to this that even if it continues for years, it will just continue for years.

I think you’re right. For example, Copernican heliocentrism is still being forced down our children’s throats.

The issue most definitely is those who choose to accept hekiocentrism as taught in schools uncritically. There are two reasons: unlike regular math, which they will use in everyday life, heliocentrism offers them a worldview that they may or may not accept, and it is not useful in everyday life as a science. If they accept heliocentrism without thinking it through, they are crossed off the list as it were. Only those who do not accept most or all of it are a problem. In what way?

I’ll bet you have never gotten a straight answer to that. Even if it continues for years it will…ummm…just continue for years.

Tip: proof read what you post. It’ll look less like you are making it up as you go along and at least one person will have read it.

 

[buss0042]

This is not an attack on you personally, but when you say

To be perfectly honest, personally speaking, when I hear that my arguments make no sense, it only defeats a hope that we can communicate

it seems like an egotistical claim - almost like its saying “my arguments are always right, and if someone can’t grasp them, then they are willfully trying to ignore my airtight evidence.”

While that may occasionally be the case, I don’t think its okay to out of hand assume someone else’s criticism of an argument is invalid. In all likelihood, they see something that you didn’t think of, and their point merits considering and taking into account. No one can truthfully assume that they are always right.

Again, not at all a personal attack - just a remark I thought to be a little odd

 

[Aloysium]

Let me state it again. What we are is spirit. The fundamental reality of everything in existence is what it does. The soul of a thing does not change its constituent matter. That matter is united in the reality that is the whole being under the organizational principle that allows that being to relate to what is other to it in the fashion that it was designed.

I’m sitting at the lake at the moment; what a glorious day. This experience is one as I perceive, contemplate, and move my thumb on the screen of my phone. This self exists one in relation to the rest of the universe, with you in another time and space. This is all matter - the perception, thoughts, feelings and actions, organized by what matter does and how my nervous system is wired. Matter hasn’t changed, it is what I am. That my relationship with God will continue after my death speaks to the reality that this is more that material activity. When I lose my faculties, if the memory persists that I can do so, I will continue to seek those ideas and try to express them in words because they come from me as a causal agent beyond the determined activity of the matter I now utilize to achieve that end.

You and I, individual beings, expressions of one mankind, do not possess souls; we are souls shaped in a psychophysical structure, formed and created beginning with one first man.

Animals are determined by the soul they “possess”; that ontological structure which they are provides them with their bodily form and instincts. An animal cannot be transformed into a human being, as a human being cannot be an animal. Our behaviour may mimic that of animals, but doing so makes us, as a result of our being spiritual beings, demonic.

As much as the church may say that we can believe that our bodily form arose from living matter, it is not clear what that would entail. That said, just as we share many of the attributes of animals, as matter coalesces ontologically to form the unity of one person, I suppose the creation of Adam may have entailed the incorporation of a hominid into that greater new whole. Again, this would not be evolution. The formation of the human brain with its capacity to express the qualities of our spirit is anything but random. And, those qualities were shaped not through natural selection but by God’s design. human being could come from some. The fact is that Adam was created immortal and we will be resurrected as such. He would possess a cellular structure that would allow for the diversity we see among different peoples free of the genetic damage that has accumulated during our stay on earth.

Where our ideas would meet is in the recognition that we share many of the qualities present in animals as we share many of those of an onion. That does not make us animals or onions. Again, thinking ourselves to be animals is illusory, stemming from the exclusion of the reality of our being spirit and evolution likewise arising from the dismissal of the living God who is present in every moment as the creative Source of our individual and collective being, here now and everywhere.

 

[Aloysium]

it seems like an egotistical claim

Yes, I get that from time to time. Just the other week someone remarked that I was being condescending. Gotta work on that.

It can be off-putting. Definitely, it refocuses the dialogue from the topic to the interpersonal dance that is going on.

See how we got to talking about me instead of the OP?

 

[buss0042]

I have to admit, I didn’t get much farther than the first few lines – I see where our problem is.

Humans are body and spirit.

Animals are purely body.

Angels are purely spirit.

We are human because we are a body and spirit. That’s the teaching of the Church. I’d refer you to CCC 365 specifically

 

[Aloysium]

Been there done that, thanks.

 

[buss0042]

We aren’t onions because our bodies don’t fall under the umbrella of plants. I hope we can agree on that, at least.

But just because we have a different soul from other animals does not mean our biological bodies suddenly behave in a physically different way. We both still have organs and tissues that work together, as you pointed out, among other things. The nature of soul does not effect the nature of biology. Can we agree on that key premise?

 

[rossum]

What we are is spirit. The fundamental reality of everything in existence is what it does. The soul of a thing does not change its constituent matter. That matter is united in the reality that is the whole being under the organizational principle that allows that being to relate to what is other to it in the fashion that it was designed.

That is a theological statement, and many people who do not subscribe to your theology will reject it, myself included.

For example, your “designed” at the end of the quote is unsupported by evidence and is rejected by many people. You cannot assume what you need to prove, that is an obvious logical error.

ID has been trying to provide non-religious evidence for the design of living organisms for many years now, and so far it has not succeeded. Have you done any better than Drs Behe and Dembski?

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

The nature of soul does not effect the nature of biology. Can we agree on that key premise?

Original sin damaged our relationship with God and His healing graces. It left us prone to the destructive properties of matter doing what it does, chaotic to the organizing processes that arise from a fully loving relationship with God.

Original sin can be understood as affecting all creation because, although it happened at a point in time, it happens ontologically, existentially where all creation emerges from eternity, the everpresent Now that is God.

On a more mundane level we see how our spirit, being one with our biology, shapes our physical structure, the workings of our nervous system, so that we can here communicate. The pattern of neuronal firings in the brain is organized in accordance with a psychological structure that allows for this as we, being causal agents, speak, write and understand.

We do perceive, we feel pain and emotions and act as do animals. We have brains, livers, kidneys, bones, muscles, hearts and lungs just as they do. This allows for animal research and xenografts. I think we are in agreement if that’s what you mean.

We do not bring ourselves into existence and are dependent on God for our being as well as that of all its constituent part. It is all given and our souls are intimately connected with the being of every component to make this unity.

 

[buss0042]

What I mean, more specifically, is this: the type of soul we have does not affect the biological happenings and biological classifications that occur to and in our bodies.

The type of soul any animal possesses does not change that all animals:

• have organs
• utilize the Kreb’s cycle and oxidative phosphorylation to create usable energy
• are multicellular and eukaryotic
• are, by structure and function, classified under the biological kingdom of “animalia”

And, by this criteria, our bodies are classified as animal. This is a purely biological claim - any argument utilizing souls doesn’t have a bearing on it. To refute a purely scientific claim would require purely scientific refutation.

This being true does not result in some ontological demotion. It is merely a biological classification that applies to all animals.

 

[rossum]

Original sin can be understood as affecting all creation because, although it happened at a point in time, it happens ontologically, existentially where all creation emerges from eternity, the everpresent Now that is God.

You have the cause, “original sin”, appearing after the effect “all creation … from eternity”. You are not talking science here, you are talking nonsense. A cause must precede the effect, otherwise it is not a cause. An effect must follow the cause, otherwise it is not an effect.

This may be good Abrahamic theology, but it is nonsense in terms of biology.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

I don’t hear any argument as to the science, the empirical evidence. It is how it is conceptualized into mankind being a species of animal or that the process is one of evolution rather than creation. This is what is at issue.

 

[Aloysium]

A cause must precede the effect,

In the slit experiment done using photons, electrons, even Bucky Balls, the pattern we find on the screen depends on whether the apparatus determines which slit the particle is going through. This happens whether or not the detection is carried out at the moment or after the particle passes through. If there is no attempt at detection a wave pattern emerges indicating that the event happens without a particle being pulled from the totality that is the apparatus. There is no particle unless we try to detect it either before or after. Events happen in their moment which can be analyzed sequentially but remain as a totality. Each moment comes from a common Ground of Existence, where all is united in one Beatific Vision. Cause is from eternity and is different from the sequence of events involved in a trajectory, which we call cause and effect but is merely the observation of change happening ultimately brought into existence in its moment.

 

[rossum]

Each moment comes from a common Ground of Existence, where all is united in one Beatific Vision.

Up to that point you were with the domain of science. With this sentence you have left science and entered theology. Since you are now in theology I can use theological arguments to refute you. Nagarjuna clearly disallows the effect preceding the cause. He also disallows the cause occurring simultaneously with the effect.

You are mixing science and theology here. That makes you vulnerable to counter-arguments on two fronts.

rossum

 

[buss0042]

Alright, let me formalize this for you

1. If something fits the classifications for being an animal, then it is an animal.
2. Humans fit the classifications.
3. Therefore, humans are animals

Which premise do you reject?

 

[edwest211]

Regarding your second sentence, what is your evidence?